Beef Liver With Parsley-Onions & Lemon: by The Clothes Make The Girl link photo for recipe

Liver and onions, as a traditional English dish,

is enjoying widespread popularity,

Celebrate National Liver and Onions day on May 10th!

Today’s five things to know about Liver and Onions

Liver and onions is a favorite in the UK and in Germany, where it is usually eaten along with boiled or mashed potatoes.

Lamb’s liver is the usual choice in the UK and is often accompanied by fried bacon.

In the French traditional recipe the liver is fried with butter and lard.

In Catalan cuisine olive oil is used, instead of butter, and fried garlic is added to the mixture.

In the USA, liver and onions as a dish once enjoyed widespread popularity and could usually be found at family diners and American home-style restaurants. This meal is currently more common to the cuisines of the southern and upper mid-western foods.

Today’s Food History

1566 R.I.P. Leonhard Fuchs. He was a German botanist who compiled the first modern, organized listing of plants and botanical terms, ‘Historia Stirpium’ in 1542. The plant and the color fuchsia were named for him.

1818 R.I.P. Paul Revere. A silversmith and American Revolutionary folk hero, he also made surgical instruments and false teeth.

1850 Sir Thomas Johnston Lipton, grocer and tea merchant, was born.

1898 The first vending machine law was passed in Omaha, Nebraska.

1920 R.I.P. John Wesley Hyatt. He developed the process for making celluloid, the first synthetic plastic. He also invented a water purifying system and a sugar cane mill.

2010 A 10 year-old 3rd grade student in Texas was given 1 week’s detention for being in possession of a candy bar at lunch time. The candy bar was also confiscated.

Today’s Food History

1842 Emil Christian Hansen was born. He was a Danish botanist who developed new methods to culture yeast. He revolutionized the beer industry, and proved that there are different species of yeast. He refused to patent the method, but instead made it available for free to other brewers.

1855 John Gates was born. Gates was an inventor, promoter and barbed wire manufacturer.

1886 Coca Cola is first sold to the public at Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia.

1968 Laurence M. Klauber died. Klauber was an American herpetologist and inventor who was a rattlesnake expert. If you want to know anything or everything about rattlesnakes, see his book “Rattlesnakes: Their Habits, Life Histories and Influence on Mankind.”

Today’s five things to know about Crepe Suzette

The most common way to make Crêpe Suzette is to pour liqueur (usually Grand Marnier) over a freshly-cooked crêpe with sugar and light it.

This will make the alcohol in the liqueur evaporate, resulting in a fairly thick, caramelised sauce. In a restaurant, a Crêpe Suzette is often prepared in a chafing dish in full view of the guests.

The origin of the dish and its name is somewhat disputed. One claim is that the dish was created out of a mistake made by a fourteen year-old assistant waiter Henri Charpentier in 1895 at the Maitre at Monte Carlo’s Café de Paris. He was preparing a dessert for the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, whose guests included a beautiful French girl named Suzette.

Different sources (like the Larousse Gastronomique) however doubt that Charpentier was serving the prince instead of the head waiter because he would have been too young.

The other claim states Crêpes Suzette was named in honor of French actress Suzanne Reichenberg (1853–1924), who worked professionally under the name Suzette.

Fun Fact:

In the early days of the crepe, white flour was an expensive product, reserved only for royalty that why savory crepes were traditionaly made with buckweat , a esay to grow plant..

Crepe is the French word for pancake. Crepes differ from traditional pancakes in that they are lighter, thinner and are utilized in both sweet and savory dishes.

Unlike pancake batter where some lumps are of no consequence, crepe batter must be smooth and more fluid, like the consistency of heavy cream.

Enchiladas originated in Mexico, where the practice of rolling tortillas around other food dates back at least to Mayan times.

Writing at the time of the Spanish conquistadors, Bernal Díaz del Castillo documented a feast enjoyed by Europeans hosted by Hernán Cortés in Coyoacán, which included foods served in corn tortillas.

In the 19th century, as Mexican cuisine was being memorialized, enchiladas were mentioned in the first Mexican cookbook, El cocinero mexicano (“The Mexican Chef”), published in 1831, and in Mariano Galvan Rivera’s Diccionario de Cocina, published in 1845.

Fun Fact:

Enchiladas appeared in an English language cookbook in 1914 titled, California Mexican-Spanish Cookbook written by Bertha Haffner Ginger.

In Costa Rica, the enchilada is a common, small, spicy pastry made with puff pastry and filled with diced potatoes spiced with a common variation of tabasco sauce or other similar sauces.

In Honduras, enchiladas is called tostada. They are not corn tortillas rolled around a filling, but instead are flat, fried, corn tortillas topped with ground beef, salad toppings, a tomato sauce, and crumbled or shredded cheese.

Today’s Food History

1865 Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Jane Cochran) was born. In 1889 Bly successfully completed an attempt to beat the record of Jules Verne’s fictional Phileas Fogg to go ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’. Bly was a U.S. newspaper reporter and completed the journey in 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds.

1903 James Beard, culinary expert and cookbook author was born. Quote: “The kitchen, reasonably enough, was the scene of my first gastronomic adventure. I was on all fours. I crawled into the vegetable bin, settled on a giant onion and ate it, skin and all. It must have marked me for life, for I have never ceased to love the hearty flavor of raw onions”.

1926 Ann B. Davis was born. She played the role of Alice the housekeeper and cook on the TV show ‘The Brady Bunch’ (1969-1974).

1936 A patent was granted for the first bottle with a screw cap to Edward Ravenscroft of Glencoe, Illinois.